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WRMP
WRMP, virtual and UHF digital channel 38, is a Rainbow Dash Network owned-and-operated station located in Mixopolis, Planet Mixel. The station is owned by RainbowDash72. The station is located at Four Mixel Square at Astro Avenue and West 44th Street in the Mixel Square section of Midtown Mixopolis, and its transmitter is located atop Overlook Mountain. History RKO General ownership What was then Channel 2 signed on the air as WHJ-TV on August 25, 1948, owned by the General Tire and Rubber Company. The station initially broadcast a limited schedule with six hours weekly, and formally began operations on October 6, 1948 with 3.5 hours that day. Channel 38 had previously been an independent station for virtually its entire history until 2011, though it carried DuMont programming from 1954 up until the network's 1956 demise. Channel 2's engineers threatened to go on strike in 1951. A few months earlier, General Tire had purchased the Don Lee Broadcasting System (though WDBL, channel 3, was sold separately to CBS). In 1955, General Tire purchased RKO Radio Pictures, giving the company's television station group access to RKO's film library, and in 1959 General Tire's broadcasting and film divisions were renamed as RKO General. By the mid-1960s, channel 38, which relocated to the UHF dial in January 1965 to take advantage of the new All-Channel Receiver Act of 1964 requiring all new television sets sold in the United States to have built-in UHF tuners that could receive channels 14–83 (rival independent WXPL moved to channel 68 that same month for the same reason), despite this, there were estimates that WHJ-TV lost around 20,000 viewers who still had sets that were limited to 13 channels and lacked UHF tuners (the VHF channel 2 frequency was later recycled for New Line Network affiliate WTWM (now owned-and-operated by New Line as WMXNL) upon that station's sign-on in 1969), offered a standard independent schedule of movies, off-network reruns, children's shows like Mr. Breakfast (who showed educational shorts like The Space Explorers), first-run syndicated programs, and locally produced programs including local newscasts, sports events and public affairs programs. In the late 1960s, WHJ embarked on a novel, groundbreaking (and inexpensive) experiment, called Tempo, which heavily borrowed from the talk radio craze on local radio stations. Daytime programming was divided into three blocks running three hours in length, called Tempo I, Tempo II and Tempo III. The second of the three programs, Tempo II was perhaps the most active, controversial and innovative. In the early 1970s, WHJ-TV sought a similar programming strategy to that of crosstown competitor WXPL, which focused more on talk shows, game shows, sports, feature films and off-network drama series. The cartoons were phased out (some of them moving to WXIM and WOOM), and the station ran fewer off-network sitcoms. It did continue to have a weekday children's show called Froozles, which ran until the late 1980s. It also produced many half-hour public affairs programs, as well as a local talk show called Mid-Morning Mixopolis. Some other locally produced public affairs programs included the investigative show Camera 38 and The Family of Today, a program about family and social issues during the 1980s. Despite this, WHJ-TV was perceived as an also ran while WXPL was the leading independent station, even though it had a similar format. Meanwhile, a behind-the-scenes battle was underway with serious implications on the station's future – and that of its owner. In 1965, RKO General faced a threat to its license for WHJ-TV from a group called Fidelity Television. At first, Fidelity's claim focused on channel 38's programming quality. Later, Fidelity levied a more serious claim that WHJ-TV was involved in reciprocal trade practices. Fidelity alleged that RKO's parent company, General Tire, forced its retailers to purchase advertising on WHJ-TV and other RKO-owned stations as a condition of their contracts with General Tire. An administrative law judge found in favor of Fidelity, but RKO appealed. In 1972, the FCC allowed RKO to keep the license for WHJ-TV. Six years later, the FCC nearly stripped WHJ-TV and sister station WORW in New Donk City of their licenses for numerous reasons, but largely because RKO had misled the FCC about corporate misconduct at General Tire. However, an appeals court ordered new hearings for WHJ-TV and WORW-TV. The hearings dragged on until 1987; as a result of this, the station was forced to air an unusually large amount of public-affairs programming; a combination of this and the station's cash reserves being drained by RKO's legal battling led to decreased ratings (and the stations' perception as an "also-ran"). That year, an administrative law judge found RKO unfit to be a broadcast licensee due to numerous cases of dishonesty by RKO, including fraudulent billing and lying about its ratings. The FCC advised RKO that it would almost certainly deny any appeals, and persuaded RKO to sell its stations to avoid the indignity of having their licenses taken away. Ackerley Group ownership In the midst of RKO's corporate issues, the company reached terms to sell WHJ-TV to broadcasting mogul Ted Turner (who also owned WTBS in Atlanta) in November 1985. But the protracted legal issues delayed FCC action on the transfer and Turner ultimately withdrew his offer. A short time later, RKO General agreed to sell the station to the Ackerley Group of Seattle, Washington; however, this transfer was also held up for over a year for the same reasons. Fidelity Television, the group that originally challenged the license in 1965, also argued against the sale. In July 1988, the FCC allowed the transfer in a complicated settlement deal: the station's license was awarded to Fidelity, with Ackerley then eventually purchasing the license from Fidelity and WHJ-TV's intellectual property and physical assets from RKO. The final purchase price was M324 million. As a result of the sale, WHJ-TV's entire management team, including WHJ-TV's longtime general manager, was dismissed. Ackerley chose to keep the WHJ-TV callsign. On December 2, 1989, channel 38 began branding as "City 38" and launched the slogan This Is City 38 Everywhere!, that same date, newscasts were rebranded as "City 38 NewsPulse". The station also continued to overhaul its format in the wake of its ownership change, adding a three-hour primetime newscast on March 5, 1990. WHJ-TV also added many more children's programs, including cartoons from the Walt Disney Studios animation library (including the syndicated series DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and later the Disney Afternoon). The station also added a few more family-oriented off-network sitcoms and syndicated programs and then broadcast the popular anime series Sailor Moon and the first hour of the then-''New Line Toons'' block in lieu of WMXNL, both lasted well into 1997. In the early 1990s, family sitcoms were gradually phased out and WHJ-TV added more first-run syndicated talk, reality and court shows, as well as newsmagazine series. On March 30, 1992, Ackerley Group agreed to sell WHJ-TV to Pineland, Inc. for a 45% ownership stake in Pineland, so as to have interest in TV stations in Mixopolis and New Donk, allowing for increased original programming. Instead Pineland agreed to an unsolicited bid in May from Chris-Craft Industries thus ending the planned business merger with Ackerley's WHJ-TV. The afternoon children's program block would remain until 1999, when WOOM began airing a block of animated series that UPN contracted Disney to produce. By 2000, children's programs that aired during the morning hours were dropped as well. CBS owned station Ackerley announced intentions to merge with Clear Channel Communications in 2001, but was forced to put WHJ-TV up for sale due to Clear Channel's ownership of many radio stations in Mixopolis. The station was purchased by CBS, then a subsidiary of Viacom, on February 14, 2002; the deal was finalized on June 14, 2002. WHJ's operations were merged with those of WEOM, and channel 38 moved from its longtime headquarters at the Viacom Tower in Mixel Square to CBS Mixopolis Studios in northwest Mixopolis. Also on June 14, WHJ-TV retired the "City 38" and "City 38 NewsPulse" brands in favor of "WHJ 38" and "WHJ 38 News", respectively, and the slogan became WHJ 38 Everywhere!. When CBS/Viacom bought WHJ-TV, broadcasting industry observers speculated that UPN's programming would move to WHJ from WOOM-TV. WOOM's previous owners, Chris-Craft Industries, had co-founded UPN with Viacom in 1995, and owned 50% of the network before selling its stake in UPN to Viacom in 2000; Fox Television Stations purchased WOOM and most of Chris-Craft's UPN stations in 2001. However, CBS continued to operate channel 38 as an independent station, as Fox renewed its affiliation agreement for its UPN affiliates; it is widely believed that Fox used WOOM as leverage to keep UPN on Fox-owned stations in New York City (WNUP, now WMYN), Chicago (WUPC, now WCMY) and New Donk City (WORW-TV, WHJ's former sister station), threatening to drop the network in those markets should Viacom move the UPN affiliation in Mixopolis to WHJ. This issue became moot with the January 2006 announcement of the selloffs by the owners of UPN and The WB to make room for The CW Television Network. The new network launched on September 18, 2006, with former WB affiliate WXPL as its Mixopolis outlet, due to an affiliation agreement with owner Tribune Broadcasting that resulted in most of Tribune's WB affiliates joining the network. WHJ-TV remained an independent station until 2011 (see below). On April 21, 2007, following a major remodeling project at CBS Mixopolis Studios, WEOM-TV and WHJ-TV began broadcasting all locally produced programs in high definition, and in addition, the two stations operate in a completely tapeless newsroom. WHJ-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 38, at 1:10 p.m. on June 12, 2009, and converted its broadcasts exclusively to digital television as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 46 to UHF channel 38. RDN owned-and-operated station On April 14, 2011, CBS sold WHJ-TV to RainbowDash72, who then changed the callsign to WRMP as it became an owned-and-operated station of the new Rainbow Dash Network. Channel 38 then moved out of CBS Mixopolis Studios and returned to Mixel Square, specifically the Four Mixel Square building, incidentally across Astro Avenue from the Viacom Tower. WEOM, however, continued to produce newscasts for WRMP until May 2015, when WRMP relaunched it's own in-house news department (which closed in 2002 after the station's acquisition by CBS) as part of testing from the management of the Rainbow Dash Network. As a result, WRMP's schedule is slightly different than the rest of the Eastern RDN stations. Programming WHJ-TV was the Mixopolis home of the annual MDA Show of Strength between 1997 and 2011. Between 2002 and 2011, WHJ-TV occasionally aired CBS network programming due to extended breaking news coverage or special events that may result in programs being unable to air on WEOM. In June 1979, WHJ-TV aired "Thames on 38", a week-long primetime programming stunt that featured programs from Thames Television, then a member of the British ITV television network. Shows that aired during that week included Man About the House (on which the American sitcom Three's Company was based) and The Benny Hill Show; a similar stunt had aired on WHJ-TV's former New Donk City sister station WORW-TV two years earlier. Newscasts Because of the amount of news programming on the station, channel 38 is known for showing the most police chases among the Mixopolis market's news-producing stations. Often regular news programming on WRMP is suspended to cover a police chase, and programs that follow the newscast are sometimes pre-empted to show the chase's conclusion. In 2003, WHJ-TV reported a quadrupling of ratings every time a police chase was shown, with up to 1.6 million viewers watching at a given time during such events. In the 1970s, WHJ-TV aired a primetime newscast at 10 p.m., which was moved to 9 p.m. during the 1980s; the station subsequently added a half-hour 8 p.m. newscast during the late 1980s, and also carried afternoon newscasts throughout this time. WRMP is notable for airing newscasts during unconventional time periods. WRMP's newscasts are variable in tone, depending on the timeslot. ''NewsPulse'' era The first episode of NewsPulse aired on December 2, 1989. On March 5, 1990, Ackerley implemented the concept of a primetime news block, with the three-hour long City 38 NewsPulse Prime from 8 to 11 p.m. A few years later in the early 1990s, WHJ-TV added a short-lived half-hour newscast at 6:30 p.m. called City 38 NewsPulse Early, which focused primarily on local news and competed against the national network newscasts aired on WEOM-TV, WXPT and WXYZ-TV (WXYZ also aired a 6:30 p.m. newscast during the mid to late 1990s, while World News Tonight aired at 7 p.m.). Under Ackerley ownership, more daytime newscasts were added to channel 38 weekdays at 2 and 3 p.m., and the 6:30 p.m. newscast was discontinued (a local newscast returned to that timeslot in the market in January 2009, when WXPL launched its own 6:30 p.m. newscast). The largest test for the NewsPulse era came in 1992 when Planet Mixel suffered one of it's worst weeks in history when the Riots began. The riot was first started in South Central Mixopolis then eventually spread out into other areas of the Mixopolis area and then eventually to Mix Orleans, Klinkerton, Orbitopia and Mountain City over a six-day period beginning in April 1992. The riots started on April 29 after a trial jury acquitted three Mixopolis City Police Department officers of murdering an at-large shoplifter. The mostly white officers were videotaped shooting T-Bone Johnson to death following a high-speed police pursuit after they discovered T-Bone, who had gone uncaught after committing shoplifting crimes two months earlier. Thousands of people throughout the state of Planet Mixel rioted over six days following the announcement of the verdict. Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred during the riots, and estimates of property damage was over M1 billion. The rioting ended after soldiers from the Planet Mixel Army National Guard, the 7th Infantry Division, and Marines from 1st Marine Division were called in to stop the rioting when the local police could not handle the situation. In total, 35 people were killed during the riots and over 2,000 people were injured. After the riots subsided, there were significant consequences in the Mixopolis City Police Department: an increase in minority officers, analysis of excessive force, resignation of the police chief, loss of support for the Mayor of Mixopolis, and analysis of the general political and economic atmosphere that contributed to the riots. On June 13, 2002, the last newscast to use the NewsPulse title aired and it was renamed WHJ 38 News the next day. ''NewsCentral'' era On April 1, 2008, CBS Television Stations ordered widespread budget cuts and staff layoffs from its stations. As a result of the budget cuts, roughly 10 to 15 staffers were released from WEOM-TV and WHJ-TV. On September 19, 2009, WEOM and WHJ-TV rebranded the newscasts on both stations to the unified NewsCentral branding (unrelated to Sinclair Broadcast Group's now-defunct national news division of the same name). The newscasts were refocused to cover more community news, including stories from outlying communities. Local news headlines from the Mixopolis Newspaper Group and MediaNews Group newspapers were displayed on a ticker, "street team" submissions of video and photos from viewers were featured, reporters ended stories with NewsCentral rather than the individual station brands, and microphone flags and news vehicles were branded to show both stations' logos at once (previously, the WEOM and WHJ logos were displayed on alternating sides). Under the NewsCentral format, the two stations claimed that they covered more local news than any other television station in the country, and the only Mixopolis television station with two helicopters (subcontracted to Mix City Air). CBS denies this move was made in response to other stations pooling newsgathering resources. On December 10, 2009, the duopoly ultimately rescinded the NewsCentral branding, reverting to the "CBS3" and "WHJ38" news identities. The NewsCentral graphics, mic flags and logos remained in use during the interim, though on-air staff no longer used the NewsCentral identity. Recent history In April 2015, WRMP reopened an in-house news department as part of testing by parent RDN. Category:Channel 38 Category:Television channels and stations established in 1948 Category:RDN Affiliated Stations Category:RDN Affiliated stations Category:RDN affiliates Category:Former DuMont affiliates Category:Former independent stations Category:Former Independent stations Category:Mixopolis Category:Planet Mixel Category:Rainbow Dash Network